Load Shedding

No more confusing PDFs, no more outdated schedules that are almost as frustrating as the power outages themselves – News24 has developed a nifty app that allows you to check exactly when your neighbourhood will be hit by load shedding.

The free web application, Grid Watch allows users to type in their suburb name, and will then churn out an easy-to-understand schedule that shows when your area is set for a power outage, depending on what schedule (Schedule 1, 2, 3A, 3B) Eskom is operating on at the time.

The best part? The app will show you schedules for the next two weeks.

The news site reportedly has plans to develop the app for Android and iOS, so you can check it out on the go.

The new schedules below are designed around the days of the month and reflect Eskom’s decision to implement loadshedding nationally on a regular basis and over weekends. They replace the previous schedules, which were designed around days of the week and were applicable for occasional loadshedding during peak demand times.

Loadshedding stages depend on the extent of the shortage of generation capacity to meet the country’s electricity demand, with stage 1 being the least serious, and stage 3b being the most serious.

Loadshedding outages generally last for about 2,5 hours, with one area being affected at a time during stage 1 and four areas being affected at a time during stage 3b.